Let’s Talk About It

I just finished an article over at MyTrendingStories about Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter and whether any of it matters. Check it out here. Feel free to bash a comment over my head about it.

In other news, this just in:

An article that must have gotten lost in the 1920’s just released new, striking information about recent research into psychoactive medication: it’s not good for long term treatment.

Another article that must have been living under a rock for the last two hundred years has just made headlines with: Locking doors in hospital doesn’t lower suicide rates.

Can we all just give these people a huge round of applause, please. I mean, think about all the brain power it took to come to these realizations, to find this research, and to use common sense to rationalize that people who feel suicidal really just need someone to talk with them.

Thanks to those people for catching up with the rest of the world. There may be hope for us after all.

It’s a sad fact that Historical Trauma exists. It’s passed down from generation to generation, and can only be healed from generation to generation. It’s not just about brain chemistry. It’s not just about genes. It’s not just about environment. It’s not just about being “ill”. It’s about realizing life is a generational experience, it’s a continuum. That things happen and they effect you, your children, and your children’s children.

Call it paranoia if you like. Call it delusional, call it what you will, that won’t excuse its existence in one form or another.

I think about the ancestors I have which were most likely forced along the Trail of Tears. I think about the ancestors I have who were brought over on boats from their homeland in Africa, given different names, bought and sold like property, whipped and hanged, and forced to fight constantly for survival. I constantly wonder how far I could go back into my ancestry until names just stop because 1) they refused to put their name on a census or 2) they were given a different name.

Some people can go on Ancestry.com and trace their history all the way back to England. Or France. Mine will inevitably stop in America. The last name I hold now isn’t even the name of my paternal grandfather.

And I’ve wondered all my life why I felt I had an identity crisis. Some people could call that a “Borderline Personality” symptom: the consistent lack and shifting of identity. I call it a result of my history.

I always feel I’m being watched. Some people call that paranoia. I call that a result of my history: there are many cultures that believe their ancestors watch over them during the after life, and I feel I’m specially, spiritually inclined, I’ve felt that way since I was a child, and I believe I will continue to feel that way.

Sometimes my brain can take all of that too far. I won’t be able to sleep or feel comfortable or get up to step outside of my room because I feel like something on the other side of the door will attack me.

My entire ancestry has been attacked in the most brutal mental and physical ways. Is it any wonder I feel that way often? Is it any wonder my social anxiety has been with me since before I learned how to spell either word?

The other side of my family is Polish. Do we really need to go into their fight? I think we’re all very aware of it.

There are many sides to Mental Health besides the characteristics of disorders. It’s something we forget all too often, I feel.

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Alishia D. is a blogger, a beginning novelist, and a counselor at 2nd Story Peer Respite house where diagnostic labels and the culture of mental health is long forgotten. She's a mental health peer who has bounced through as many labels as she has doctors, and enjoys being sarcastic when she can. She also hates writing in 3rd person.

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No longer do we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts. Rather, we are there to realign our patients’ neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter, whatever its configuration.

–Loren R Mosher, M.D to the APA

The FDA calls certain substances “controlled”. But there are no “controlled substances”, there are only controlled citizens.

–Thomas Szasz, MD

Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even by a vote of the members of the APA, not to mention the courts.

–Peter Breggin, MD

Prior to being medicated, a depressed person has no known chemical imbalance.

–Robert Whitaker.

Is NAMI (National Alliance Of The Mentally Ill) A healthcare advocate as it would have the public believe? Having accepted 11.2 million dollars from 18 drug firms between 1996 and mid-1999 [23 million in 2006-2008] it is no less an arm of the pharmaceutical industry than is psychiatry itself.

–Fred A Baughman Jr., MD.

Contrary to what is often claimed, no biochemical, anatomical, or functional signs have been found that reliably distinguish the brains of mental patients.

–Elliot S. Valenstein, Ph.D

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.

–R.D Laing, M.D.

Why don’t you have a right to say you are Jesus? And why isn’t the proper response to that “congratulations”?